Star Wars: Force Commander

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An RTS game based in the Star Wars universe? Where do I sign up?

By IGN Staff

Force Commander is one of those games that a lot of you have been asking about ... and for good reason. The game has been in development for quite a while, and we all know how popular anything that carries the Star Wars name is. Well, for a while there, it looked like Force Commander might not see the light of day. The original 2D game was totally scrapped and sent back for retooling. But the project is coming along quite nicely now, at least from what we saw on our recent visit to LucasArts.

So why scrap the entire 2D project and restart with a 3D engine? Well, besides the obvious visual upgrade that a fully 3D world provides, Garry told us about the team's main drive behind going to a 3D world. "Star Wars has always about getting down there with the troops, with the walkers," Associate Project Leader Garry Gaber explained. "We wanted to give that to gamers." And it certainly looks like LucasArts is going to deliver. You'll see the action from a free-floating, controllable camera which can be attached to specific units, hot spots, or entire groups on the battlefield. Want to get close and personal? Just zoom in on the action. Want to see an overview of how the battle is unfolding? Then simply zoom out and command the skirmish from a bird's eye view.

In Force Commander you play as Brenn Tanter, a career soldier in the Imperial Navy who starts as a Stormtrooper and works his way up to the rank of General. But you won't play the game entirely from the Imperial side. One of the really cool things about Force Commander is that you'll switch allegiances mid-game, and you'll actually return to planets you previously visited as an Imperial General after you change sides. One example Garry gave us was on Endor, where you are responsible for constructing a base as an Imperial, and then destroying it later as a Rebel. Sounds cool, huh?

There will be a total of 24 missions, 12 on the Imperial side and 12 on the Rebellion, that go all the way through the classic movie series -- plus a bit more. You'll start out the game with three training missions on Tatooine, but quickly move through way through the Star Wars universe. As Garry told us, "In the Star Wars series, there were only two major land battles -- the one on Hoth and the one on Endor. We're going to recreate those battles as well as give gamers several more battles to play. And you'll get to go to every major planet in the Star Wars universe like Tatooine, Hoth, and Endor." The landscapes themselves will be familiar to any Star Wars fan. Tatooine is a sandy desert, Hoth a foreboding frozen plain, etc. And each landscape will be full of objects that affect gameplay. For example, roads will increase travel times and perilous Sarlac pits will impede the progress of your ground troops. Don't get too close unless you're prepared to lose a few infantrymen.

In addition to the well-known locales, some familiar faces will pop up during the campaigns as well. "You get to control all of the major characters from the original movies in certain missions, including C3PO, R2D2, Luke, Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and even Darth Vadar himself on Hoth," Garry told us. You'll also see a lot of memorable scenes from the movies in this upcoming RTS, albeit with some slight alterations. As Garry explained, "One thing that was really cool was the licensing department let us use footage from Star Wars Special Edition and add our own vehicles and characters to it." You'll see most of these enhanced scenes in the cutscenes that play after every three missions or so.

Of course, all of your favorite units from the Star Wars universe will appear in Force Commander: AT-ATs, X-Wings, Tie Fighters, and the like. "Anything you see in the Star Wars movies will be in the game," said Garry. "For example, we have Tusken Raiders, Dewbacks, and Bantas on Tatooine." But you'll also see a number of new units, like attack tanks and the anti-aircraft AT-AA that Jason mentioned in his earlier preview, that haven't been seen in any of the movies. There will be ground units as well as air units, all modeled after their big screen counterparts. The design team went as far as making the air units fly patterns right from the movies while they're waiting to attack. This game is all about attention to detail, and fans of the Star Wars series are going to find a lot to love here.

Units can be set on four different stances: Belligerent (attack on sight and follow enemies until destroyed), Guard (attack enemies, but don't follow them), Defensive (only attack if enemies come within a certain radius), and Peaceful (don't attack even if provoked -- right, like you're ever going to use that one). In a unique move for the RTS genre, you can combine some units to make new, enhanced units. For example, speederbikes need a pilot to work, and Dewbacks become more effective attackers with a Stormtrooper riding shotgun. And if all of these unit options aren't enough for you, just steal some firepower from your enemies. Remember the scene from Return of the Jedi when Chewbacca nabbed that Imperial walker on Endor, only to turn it back against the Imperials? Well, you'll be able to do that in Force Commander with special infiltrator units as well. As a matter of fact, one of the Rebel missions requires you to capture an AT-AT to use as a Trojan Horse of sorts to fool the Imperials. And guess who one of the best infiltrators is? Big, strong, and hairy himself. No, not IGNPocket EIC Craig Harris -- Chewbacca.

Instead of constructing bases and units, you'll call in buildings, turrets, and military units from orbiting transports. This is not only more fitting to the Star Wars universe (I mean, it would take a long time to actually construct a base), but it also alleviates the tank rush tactics. Transports will have a limited amount of space to carry units, and larger more powerful units will require more space, so you can't just call down 50 AT-ATs to walk over an enemy base.

There also won't be any resource gathering in Force Commander. Instead the game will utilize a system of command points that you can use to get new units and buildings during a battle. If you accomplish certain goals during a mission -- capturing an enemy building for example -- you will gain even more command points to allocate.

Force Commander will support up to 4 players over the Internet, TCP/IP connection, or IPX network. Garry told us that right now the design team is looking at a lot of different multiplay options, but that Force Commander will definitely include options for playing co-operative campaigns, head-to-head skirmishes, capture the flag, and beacon wars (similar to capture and hold) where you have to light a series of beacons on a playfield in order to win.

As of now it looks like Force Commander is going to be a lot of fun. I mean, it's a Star Wars RTS for Christ's sake ... Star Wars! And the 3D engine certain does look much more pleasing than the flat 2D version that we saw last year. Expect to see Force Commander sometime in early 2000.

-- Tal Blevins

E3 Update 5/13/99

So whatever happened to Force Commander? It was supposed to have been out last year, and it used to be a 2D real-time strategy game, pretty much with flat sprites on a 2D background, like Command & Conquer with Star Wars units.

Well that plan was scrapped, the game was retooled with a 3D engine, and LucasArts showed the game off again for the first time in a long while.

The new engine has a complete free-floating camera, providing both zoomed out overhead views as well as closer in 3D looks and even a camera lock that can be applied to any individual unit, creating a first-person point of view. The camera can move around in 360 degrees of freedom.

The game will play like most real-time strategy games, with a point and click interface to guide your troops onto the attack. The focus however is on tactics and combat, though, so there is no base-building or resource-gathering. There will be bases in the game that you'll need to either attack or defend, but these will be hand-built by the map designers and part of the terrain, more or less.

You start the game on the Imperial side and eventually end up on the side of the Rebels. Single player gameplay is spread over 24 missions, while multiplayer (up to four players on a network or the Internet) has 40 missions, though some maps are duplicates from the single player game. The game will span many well-known Star Wars planets, including Yavin, Hoth, and Tatooine.

LucasArts has also added new units to round the combat vehicles of both sides -- we saw both rebel tanks and the AT-AA, an Imperial antiaircraft device, in action.

And yes, the snow speeders can lasso the bad guys, twisting up the Walkers with cables and causing them to collapse. A Direct3D compliant 3D card is recommended but a software-only mode will also be available.

No firm release date has yet been set for what will probably be the last game from LucasArts covering Star Wars: Episodes IV-VI for some time.